Thandeka
"We Who Believe in Freedom"
a report from the Re-Imagining Gathering
by Doug King
posted 11-1-00
Thandeka is an associate professor of theology and
culture at
Meadville/Lombard Theological School. She has taught in the philosophy
department at San Francisco State University and the religion
department at Williams College. She has also been a Fellow at the
Stanford Humanities Center and Stanford University, and a visiting
scholar at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Her latest
book is Learning to Be White: Money, Race and God in America.
Before receiving her doctorate in theology, Thandeka spent 16 years as
an Emmy award-winning television producer. A Unitarian-Universalist
minister and theologian, Thandeka was given her name in 1984 by
Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The name is Xhosa and means one who is loved
by God.
(From the Gathering program book)
"It's truth-telling time," Thandeka began,
"and we're exhausted. And so we come together here -- to re-imagine
God." And she reminded her audience of the assurance in Matthew's
Gospel, that "when two or three are gathered ... there is She among
us." But, she went on, "when we re-imagine the sacred, we have
to re-imagine ourselves as well."
The basic thesis for her talk was that "we live
in toxic environments -- toxic for both soul and body." They are
toxic because they teach us "to believe that at core we are
unlovable." To create any new sacred community, then, "we must
re-imagine our selves as the sacred vessels they are."
Thandeka develop her proposal for developing this
community with readings from her book, Learning to Be White: Money,
Race and God in America. Her first story illustrated her basic
point: She had just moved to become a teacher at Williams College, and
was invited out for lunch by a wealthy white colleague. After a while
the colleague said "I've always wanted to know what it feels like
to be black." Thandeka sought a way to respond to this, and finally
suggested to the woman that she try a little exercise for a week, and
then they could talk again. "This week," she said,
"whenever you use any person's name or talk about another person,
use the adjective 'white' to describe them. Do that for a week, then we
can talk." The woman never called for another lunch date.
Racism, she has concluded, is rooted in children's
fear of exile, abandonment, if they hold positive feelings toward
persons of another race. They soon learn to set aside such feelings,
lest they lose the love of the people nearest and dearest to them. So
children learn to hide their original feelings of openness and
friendliness toward people of other groups, even to get rid of them;
they give up their own integrity in order to survive as part of their
own group.
"I believe," she went on, "the same
thing happens with issues of gender and sexual orientation" and our
attitudes toward anyone else identified as "other."
So all of us have learned "to hide the parts of
ourselves that if expressed would lead to destruction. The tragedy is
that most of us don't know that we have died." As we know that
abused children often adore their abusers, it's clear that what we see
in the implanting of racial attitudes is child abuse, she said.
To build community, we must "resurrect the
broken, tortured aspect of our selves," she went on. Jesus, himself
the victim of torture, recognizes other victims and is with them, saying
(in her twist on what speaker Kathy Black heard while sitting helpless
in the produce aisle) "There with the grace of God am
I."
Concretely, Thandeka has worked with a few others to
establish the Center for Community Values, which encourages people to
set up Covenant Groups -- 6 to 8 people who covenant together to observe
confidentiality in the conversations, to develop opening and closing
rituals, to do "check-ins" sharing why they are all so
exhausted, to "hear one another into speech." And the members
decide on something they want to do together -- read a book, knit,
whatever it may be. Further, they agree to decide on something that they
will do together every 4 to 6 weeks for the wider community.
The group keeps one empty chair at each meeting, a
symbol of their welcome to new members. When the group grows to a dozen
members it splits, and so the movement grows. For more on this movement,
go to their web site.
Most of the questions after Thandeka's talk focused on
the Covenant Group program. She assured one questioner that there is a
clear spiritual dimension to the groups, because the rituals provide a
time for attending to the meeting of body, mind and spirit, and bring
together the interior and exterior dimensions of the lives of the
participants. After all, she explained, "the people of Jesus were
invited not just to believe in Jesus, but to follow
him."
The groups provide a setting in which people can begin
to overcome the toxicity and racism that have "broken us,"
because they create safe places where we can "be who we are, be
healthy, vibrant freedom fighters, freedom workers ... where we can cry
the tears of the pain, the unspeakable pain from the murders of our own
histories." There groups allow us to become "un-stuck,"
she added, "so we can become reborn."
